For the last six months when people have asked me what we are up to, my stock response has been “we are building a pub”; but I’ve now realised that this isn’t a very useful description of what we are doing.

Whilst we definitely are building a pub, the pub is not the only end product. What we are actually doing is building a community, through the process of designing and building a pub. We are bringing the public into the process of building a new place because we believe that places work better when everybody is involved.

We hope that the finished pub will be excellent, but the real achievement will be the collaboration of 50 designer makers and 600 volunteers over the next few months.

So when people ask what me about the project I should probably answer something like:

“The Pilcrow is utilising the skills of designers, makers and craftspeople as a way to collaborate with the public.”

To be honest, I’ll probably still say “we are building a pub” but at least I've written this down somewhere!